Current weather

Pirates get back to work

Crews, ships taken

Posted: Wednesday, April 15, 2009

By ELIZABETH A. KENNEDY

MOMBASA, Kenya - Somali pirates captured four more ships and took more than 60 crew members hostage in a brazen hijacking spree, while the American captain who escaped their grip planned to reunite with his crew and fly home today to the United States.

Capt. Richard Phillips of the Maersk Alabama has been hailed as a hero for offering himself up as a hostage to save his crew. In a dramatic rescue, U.S. Navy SEALs shot three pirates dead Sunday night to free Phillips after a five-day standoff.

Phillips and his 19-man crew will reunite in the Kenyan port of Mombasa today and fly from there to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland on a chartered flight, according to the shipping company Maersk. They will be reunited with loved ones at Andrews in a private reception area.

Pirates have vowed to retaliate for five colleagues slain by U.S. and French forces in hostage rescues in the past week, and the top U.S. military officer said Tuesday he takes those comments seriously.

But Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told ABC's "Good Morning America" that "we're very well prepared to deal with anything like that."

Despite Mullen's confident statement and President Obama's warning of further U.S. action, Somali pirates captured two more nautical trophies Tuesday to match the two ships they seized a day or two earlier.

NATO spokeswoman Shona Lowe said pirates in three or four speedboats captured the Sea Horse off Somalia's eastern coast Tuesday - an attack that came only hours after the Irene was seized in a rare overnight raid in the nearby Gulf of Aden.

The two Egyptian fishing boats were hijacked in the gulf off Somalia's northern coast but it was not clear if those attacks came Monday or Sunday.

The Gulf of Aden, which links the Suez Canal and the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean, is one of the world's busiest and most vital shipping lanesy.